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This piece was originally written for the Baker Street Babes and can be found on their website here.

To a great mind, nothing is little.

—-Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

130 years ago today, Beeton’s Christmas Annual took a chance on a story by new author, a doctor in his twenties who happened to be named Arthur Conan Doyle. A Study in Scarlet is a peculiar tale by modern standards, with its separated sections and unfortunate depictions of Mormonism. Even at the time, it didn’t create much of a splash at initial publication.

But there’s something about it.

It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together

—-Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

There’s something about the youngest, sharpest incarnations of two people meeting for the first time. It’s impossible now to read the story without knowing the context of what is to come, but I believe that if you could, it would still have the power to whet your appetite and make you crave more of the interactions between Holmes and Watson, as the doctor takes you on the roller coaster journey of trying to understand his new flatmate.

It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it.

—-Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

There’s also something about the detection, the “attainable superpower,” as Benedict Cumberbatch once described it. Holmes is always ahead, but he’s not superhuman. This youngest, sharpest Holmes does what all of us do, but he does it better and more, and he makes us realize, or at least imagine, what it would be like to understand the world around us to a far fuller extent.

There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination, there is no horror.

—-Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

A Study in Scarlet is filled with the sense of adventure and razor-edge plotting that would come to characterize Doyle’s short stories. His ability to craft suspense, while perhaps not yet at its height, is certainly evident in the story’s most thrilling moments. Another Holmesian through-line is the question of vigilante versus traditional justice, the question of whether horrendous acts can be justified. The very young Doyle crafted an engaging mystery; but, characteristically, he couldn’t resist including the kind of moral dilemma that would pepper the pages of many of his greatest stories.

There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.

—-Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

Except it hadn’t been done before. Though few realized it at the time, when A Study in Scarlet burst onto the scene, it ushered in an era in which the world would be captivated by a detective who could be moody and kind, genius and ignorant, contemplative and frenetic. The Era of Holmes and Watson, when two men with disparate habits and personalities would forge one of the most engaging partnerships in literary history, came with more of a whimper than a bang.

I think that’s part of what makes today wonderful. I wish I could travel in time to tell Doyle that his manuscript isn’t going to linger in oblivion. Jokes related to his feelings about Holmes aside, I wish I could show him that the era he created would never end. Instead, I want to tell him, it will endure through changing tastes and mores, somehow remaining relevant and poignant no matter how much time elapses.

Happy 130 years to a story that started as nothing–and changed the world.

I don’t think about it all that much, the intersection of my disability and my love of Sherlock Holmes. I’m a permanently-disabled person; my physical disability goes with me and is part of me, wherever I go and whatever I do. These days, I’m so used to the idea of Sherlock Holmes as a positive coping mechanism that I hardly even stop to think about the magic of it all any more–the magic of the way a fictional detective joined me on my journey one day, jumping into the landscape of my life and making himself at home.

I met Holmes as a preteen, but I truly fell in love with him as a character right in the middle of the period that I think of as my “Crohn’s Decade.” I was a distance-learning college student in my mid-20s, trying to make sense of an incurable disease and physical limitations my doctors couldn’t solve. In contrast, Sherlock Holmes was the ultimate solver. He might make mistakes on occasion, but for the vast majority of the 60 canonical stories, he’s at the top of his game. I could get lost in a story like “The Copper Beeches” and know that it was all going to come out right in the end. Holmes would figure it out. Even if no one could figure me out, I had a place to go where everything made sense.

Alongside my health issues came mental ones, exacerbated by the physical challenges I faced. I’m clinically obsessive-compulsive. I’ve had intermittent bouts of major depression, and I have an anxiety disorder. At times, along the way, I’ve felt like an alien trying to survive in a world where I don’t seem to fit, an outsider looking in. You know who else is an outsider? The world’s only consulting detective. Never once has Sherlock Holmes made me feel alienated; in fact, the celebration of Holmes’s uniqueness in the Doyle Canon, his difference from the norm, has helped me to look at my own personality with a gentler eye. I might never reach Watsonian or Lestrade-like levels of societal acceptability. I might never be able to conform to what is expected of me or reach the social normalcy I sometimes seek, but neither does Sherlock Holmes. He’s an iconoclastic, self-directed character, and he’s not always happy, either. He has good days and (very) bad days. The point is, he’s always uncompromisingly himself. His radical self-acceptance is an ongoing challenge in my quest to reach my own.

Finally, Holmes’s character arc of defeat and triumph has served as a highly personal inspiration for me through the darkest time in my life, my cancer fight that resulted in a permanent ileostomy and other challenging physical complications. As a Christian, I often look to the Bible, and Micah 7:8 makes me think of Holmes: “Do not rejoice against me, O my enemy, for though I fall, I will rise again!” To defeat his enemy, Holmes takes the classical journey to the underworld, dying to the life he once had, but ultimately emerging stronger and more victorious than he could have ever imagined. I love Doyle’s resurrection story “The Empty House” less for its character reunions, though they’re marvelous, and much more for the fact that Holmes re-emerges in a blaze of glory, solving a locked room mystery and taking down his remaining nemesis without, it seems, breaking much of a sweat. I’ve never confronted the likes of Moriarty at the Falls or Colonel Moran with an air gun, but I know what it is to confront my deepest fears and to emerge from the crucible of suffering with a greater determination and will to not only survive, but to transcend. Through Holmes I’m reminded that my Reichenbach is not the end; it’s only the beginning. Though I fall, like Holmes, I will rise again.

I don’t have much patience for those who dismiss fandom as a silly thing or a little thing, who fail to grasp that stories have power to change our lives and bring us hope. Even after years of frantic Holmesian cultural zeitgeist, I still constantly see people posing the question–why is Holmes so popular? Why do we still love him so very much? I can’t answer that for everyone, just myself. He started out as an imaginary friend in my childhood, but later he became an integral part of understanding and coping with my personal disability, helping me to process and accept the daily challenges that shape my life and my identity. He’s a man who solves what can’t be solved, but at the same time is never quite solved himself. He’s a hero who transcends death, and he does it without ever being the stereotypical shining knight on a white steed. He’s a deeply imperfect man who accomplishes an uncommon thing.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling very courageous, I even aspire to follow in his footsteps

(This review was originally written for the Baker Street Babes and can be found on our site here.)

(This will be spoiler-free for major mysteries and plot points beyond the setup)

Mystery Queen (Queen of Mystery) is 2017’s newest contribution to the ongoing Sherlock Holmes zeitgeist. Produced by South Korea’s Public Broadcasting network (KBS, aired on KBS2), it’s far from being a rehash of familiar territory. Instead, it breaks new ground with a smile, a wink, and a refreshingly self-deprecating tone.

The opening episode wastes no time whatsoever in introducing the key players, beginning with an impressive action piece in which we see both the street smarts and physical prowess of our Watson (Wan-seung), played with rough charm by veteran star Kwon Sang-woo. Any fight that includes our hero breaking a clay flowerpot into a perp’s face is one I can get behind, and I particularly like the visceral quality of the action throughout the episode. This no pretty, choreographed martial arts-style combat. It’s about fists and survival.

In contrast, we’re subsequently introduced to our lady Sherlock (Seol-ok) through what appears to be a mundane instance in which a shopkeeper can’t figure out who is stealing from her, while the police refuse to take her seriously. In a sequence reminiscent of any number of Doyle’s Holmes stories, Seol-ok uses clues and security footage to put together a string of clever deductions that lead straight to the solution to the mystery. Played by Choi Kang-hee (one of my all-time favorite Korean actresses), this middle-aged, married female Holmes bears all the hallmarks of the character we love–she’s whip-smart, nonconformist, eccentric, and socially unusual. (Case in point: In oblivious Holmesian fashion, after solving this initial mystery, she asks the shopkeeper for a discount–apparently missing the ample social cues that indicate the woman is processing the personal emotional implications of what Seol-ok has just uncovered.)

Our third major player also comes into the picture during our convenience store case, the Inspector Lestrade character (Chief Hong), played by Lee Won-keun. The youngest Lestrade adaptation I’ve seen on screen to date, Chief Hong has an endearing younger-brother relationship with Seol-ok, whom he calls Seonsaengnim (a Korean title used for a respected mentor) . We are quickly shown that he’s risen to being precinct chief at an unusually young age, mostly because she’s been helping him solve difficult and perplexing cases for quite a while. Hong is no idiot, but he lacks Seol-ok’s speed of thought and ability to connect unusual clues. In this iteration, however, he’s humble enough to willingly look to the person who has the skills he lacks.

The episode’s central mystery, one with higher stakes that potentially sets up a series arc, is presented in a visually-engaging way by showing various characters’ different mental constructs of how the crime was committed. As clues are added and theories are refined, we see the changes reflected in these psychological reconstructions. Overused, this could be annoying, but in this episode, it’s relied upon sparingly and simply serves as a way to show rather than just telling, and it’s a welcome technique.

Mystery Queen is not a strictly procedural mystery show. The above is simply the setup, and as the story is fleshed out, it’s clear that we’ll be delving into the mysteries of our characters’ lives as much as the crimes they solve. Seol-ok is the wife of an absent prosecutor and daughter-in-law to his domineering, social-climbing mother. For years, she’s harbored a dream to become a police detective (and has the skills to pass the test) but has deferred her dream to further her husband’s career. Our closest equivalent to Mrs. Hudson is Seol-ok’s best friend, divorced chef Kyung-mi. Some of the episode’s strongest moments are between the two women, who have painfully honest conversations about love, marriage, and divorce. Their friendship, and the struggles they share, takes a charming series and provides it with emotional weight.

I’ve covered quite a bit of ground, but I’d be remiss in not mentioning that the series contains a hefty dose of comedy. It’s not a constant slapstick-fest, and it has plenty of dramatic moments, but the overall tone is light. I find that particularly refreshing after the slew of extremely serious and self-important Holmes adaptations that have come out in recent years. I love larger-than-life, superhero Holmes. I also love a Holmes who’s just trying her level best to keep her nosy relatives from finding out that she’s a super sleuth on the side. An added dollop of elderly ladies who lunch and do their own version of detective work is particularly hilarious.

Culturally speaking, Mystery Queen contains enough recognizable nods to Doyle’s Holmes that even viewers who are not aficionados of KDrama should be able to enjoy it and make it through some unfamiliar cultural territory. Thus far, the most jarring aspect for viewers from more individualistically-inclined cultures, I think, will be Seol-ok’s home situation. Simply, going into it with the understanding that in-laws are treated like immediate family and that social structure dictates a high level of respect for and obedience to family and societal elders would be helpful.

I’m pleasantly surprised by Mystery Queen. It’s funny, it’s quirky, it’s intelligent, and it re-adapts characters I know and love in familiar but fresh ways. Even more than that, as a feminist, I’m delighted to finally find a series that introduces a female Holmes with a realistic life. She’s brilliant, and she’s odd. As many brilliant and unusual women have found, society doesn’t usually reward those who choose to walk a different path. It would have been easy to give Seol-ok an easier life, to make her single, fabulously wealthy, and able to do whatever she wants. Instead, the writers of Mystery Queen have given us a far more complex gift, a woman with the mind of Sherlock Holmes and a life that looks a whole lot like that of many women around the world. Seol-ok is no superhero. She’s a real-life woman trying to juggle her talents and society’s expectations, and sometimes that’s even better.

Mystery Queen (Queen of Mystery) airs on KBS2 on Wednesday and Thursday nights at 10:00p.m. and will run for 16 episodes (barring an extension, which would be announced later).

I’ll admit it: This book had me at the revelation that the high school-aged narrator’s locker was 221A, meaning, of course, that the new girl, Sherlock Holmes, would soon take possession of locker 221B.

Garrison isn’t the first author to craft feminine versions of Holmes and Watson or to write about Holmes’s younger years, but The Twisted Blackmailer is one of the best-written books I’ve encountered in the genre. As you might have tracked from the comment about lockers, the book also takes place in the modern world. Since the advent of modernized Holmes on TV, this isn’t a particularly difficult concept to take on board, particularly since Garrison’s characterizations are spot on.

Canon aficionados might have guessed from the title that the story riffs off Doyle’s Milverton case. This book takes its own twists and turns and is inspired by the original rather than being imprisoned by it.

Particularly enjoyable is Watson’s sardonic practicality and literal narrative style that sometimes seems to reveal more than the narrator intends. That’s a difficult thing to achieve, but Garrison manages it seamlessly.
If you decide to give this book a try, don’t be afraid that you’ll miss the Sherlock Holmes we know and love. Our favorite detective may be a girl in the modern world, but the essential Sherlock Holmes is lovingly present on each page – maddening, endearing, hilarious, and brilliant.
Alternate universes can go terribly wrong or very, very right. Garrison has begun crafting an enjoyable Sherlockian AU that I’ll be excited to visit many times in the future. (Twisted Blackmailer is Book 1 of a planned series.)
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to go to high school with Sherlock Holmes, this is certainly the book for you. If you’re leery of non-traditional approaches, don’t be put off. The Twisted Blackmailer is a beautifully-written book that tells an engaging mystery story involving a Holmes and Watson who are as irresistible a duo as ever, while teasing upcoming mysteries for future stories to solve. Hard to put down, and I’m looking forward to the next one.
Paperback available here

Available for e-purchase here
The above-reviewed work was provided for consideration by the publisher. All opinions expressed are the reviewer’s own.

For several years now, I’ve been writing regularly about Sherlock Holmes, more than I’ve ever written about anyone else. That means that he (and Irene Adler, the co-protagonist of my novels) lives in my brain in a way that few characters, if any, ever have.

I’m currently in the editing process of my fourth Sherlockian mystery novel, but what many people don’t know is that I wrote the first draft of it while I was undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer. For a while each day, I escaped the pain, fatigue, and depression the drugs caused by jumping into Holmes’s world and walking with him. He was my companion in the cancer center and a friend who helped me through some very dark days.

Fiction matters, and stories are important, not just the heavy, sad ones. Being able to escape to a mental world populated by Adler and Holmes made one of the most difficult times in my life less bleak.

I have a special place in my heart for all of the stories and characters I encountered and enjoyed during my cancer treatments, but Sherlock and Irene dwarf the rest of them because I didn’t just read about them, I also wrote. I forced myself to enter their world by creating, and in so doing, I found a deeper purpose and a satisfying temporary respite from my daily struggles.

I know that nothing I write will ever be perfect. That is the curse and blessing of the author, because it means flawlessness is unattainable, but that, at the same time, improvement is always possible. Still, though I know I can’t reach perfection, I write–because I know how it feels when a story becomes more than just fiction and a character becomes a friend. The chance to offer that to someone else who might need a new world to escape into and an imaginary friend today? That’s a priceless gift.

I absolutely love this photo, which depicts the immortal William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes in a dramatic mood, while Watson looks, frankly, horrified. I could laugh at it for hours.

Quite honestly, there’s a lot about Sherlock Holmes I could laugh at for hours. One of my biggest discoveries when I re-read the Canon as an adult was a treasure trove of dry humor that had gone over my head as a child.

Recently, my fellow Baker Street Babe, acclaimed author Lyndsay Faye, commented that in her view, one of the surest ways for a Holmes pastiche/fanfiction story to fail is to be over-serious, because that’s simply not the tone Doyle created. Her thoughts made me realize that as a writer and reviewer, I completely agree. I can forgive a lot of things in Holmes stories, and generally, my reading experience is celebratory of the fact that we all have these characters we love that we continue to want to explore. However, I have a lot of trouble with stories that treat Holmes and Watson and their world as humorless; those lose me.

As a writer, all of my Holmes stories are partially tongue-in-cheek, and I’m not sure readers always get the jokes. Author intention vs. reader interpretation is a topic for another time, but rest assured, if you’re ever reading one of my books and something strikes you as funny? It’s absolutely supposed to be.

When it comes down to it, I don’t think I could have sustained this many years of ardent love for these 60 stories if they weren’t funny. People often ask me and other writers why the stories have endured in popularity for so many years. I wouldn’t argue that humor is the only or primary reason, but I think it’s an important one.

So next time your love of Holmes starts to get over-serious, whisper “Norbury” to yourself and get over it 😉